Atticus Finch Dialectical Journal

I am reading To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, and I am on page 36. This book is about the Finch family, which consists of the main character Scout, her older brother, Jem, and their father, Atticus. Every summer, their friend Dill visits Jem and Scout. The family’s cook, Calpurnia, spends time watching the children. The story takes place during the Great Depression, in a small town in Maycomb, Alabama. So far, the children are fascinated with their recluse neighbor, Boo Radley. They are trying to make him come out of his house. In this journal, I am predicting and evaluating.

A bunch of characters in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird affect other characters. Each character is affected differently. Scout affects a bunch of characters. On page 46, Scout brings out the good in Dill. What I mean by this is that Scout and Dill are really close friends and Dill says he is going to marry Scout. This also affects Scout. Dill says he is going to marry Scout makes her feels joyful. On that page it says “He had asked me earlier in the summer to marry him, then he promptly forgot about it. He staked me out, marked as his property, said I was the only girl he would ever love,then he neglected me.” Dill started to neglect Scout by hanging out with Jem more yes that upset

The door creaked louder as it was lazily pulled shut by a guard on the other side. Then the room went completely silence. They squeaky door played over and over again in Atticus’s mind. The only light he could see from where he was sitting on the cold, damp floor was coming from the small crack under the heavy door. Atticus stood up and held his arm at feeling for a wall. As he held one arm against the wall, he carefully made his way across the room. He felt his foot hit an object and sat down. He touched the item and realized it was his satchel that he had dropped earlier. He slipped a hand in the bag checking to make sure everything was still there. He felt the cool leather of a book at his fingertips. This book is what caused him to get

1)From the rusty window of the second floor, my eyes could easily spot her lying in the lush, green grass. Her small body stretches like a snake. The sun’s rays gently touch her bright yellow-orange fur. Her expression is as calm as the one of a sleeping baby. Once the sun starts to annoy her, she walks into the shadows of the walls and continues her sleeping beauty routine.

This single quote is the most meaningful passage in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD and in turn has a major impact to the content of the novel and to the emotions of the reader.

Another character that helps Scout to become accepting is Tom Robinson. He teaches Scout how pervasive racism is and the importance of fighting it. When Tom Robinson gets shot by trying to escape, Scout begins to experience for the first time, how strong racism and prejudice is between whites and blacks. After reading Mr. Underwood’s article, she realizes that Tom Robinson is a “dead man” once Mayella Ewell “open[s] her mouth and scream[s]” (Lee 241). Society is so unjust; Tom is stuck in a situation, where it is impossible for him to win the case, since a black man’s word will never be more respected than a white woman’s. After the trial, Scout is more aware of the need to treat all races equally. One day after Scout and Jem visits Calpurnia’s church, Scout asks if she can “‘come see [Calpurnia] sometime’” (Lee

Scout, Jem, and Dill work many summers to try to get Boo to come out of the Radley house for the first time in many years. Jem had been told many things about Boo in his short years in Maycomb, and he tells his sister Scout about the ‘monster’, saying, “Boo was about six-and-a-half feet tall, judging from his tracks; he dined on raw squirrels and any cats he could catch, that’s why his hands were bloodstained—if you ate an animal raw, you could never wash the blood off. There was a long jagged scar that ran across his face; what teeth he had were yellow and rotten; his eyes popped, and he drooled most of the time” (chap. 1). Jem’s ideas about Boo are very biased toward rumors that can be heard around Maycomb. This shows how Maycomb’s people often judge before they know, seeing as no one has seen Boo Radley in over twenty years and people are prejudiced to believing the unknown is always bad. Prejudice and rumors can often not be trusted and Boo Radley is no exception. After Miss Maudie’s house catches fire and half the town rushes outside to watch it burn, Atticus tells Scout, “someday you should thank him for covering you up” then Scout asks, “Thank Who?” And gets a response from Atticus, “Boo Radley. You were too busy looking at the fire, you didn’t even notice when he put the blanket around you” (chap. 8). Boo Radley is not really a bad person, he

It was said when Scout was telling about Maycomb County, and how everything was struggling to get by, and money was so tight.

When Attic us was walking down the aisle past the crowds of people Reverend Sykes tells Scout to stand up because of her father walking by as the Negroes were doing all around her and on another balcony. (PG. 283)

“Another reason, the simplest, the ugliest, was that this hitherto peaceful congregation of neighbors and old friends had suddenly to endure the unique experience of disturbing each other; understandably, they believed that the murderer was among themselves.” (88)

Everyone else was gettin’ their lunches but I didn’t have none. That teacher Miss Caroline was gonna give me a few cents to go downtown and get somethin’ but I got nothin’ to pay her back. I politely shook my head. I’d never take anythin’ I couldn’t pay back. A girl in the classroom walked towards me. “Walter can’t talk, Miss Caroline. And he’s a Cunningham. They won’t take anythin’ they can’t give back,” “Scout. Who are you to tell me what other people are thinking? If he wants to tell me somethin’ than I’ll hear it from him.” I was afraid. I didn’t know what Miss Caroline was gonna do to me or to the girl. Miss Caroline had pulled the girl with her. I could tell the girl was in great fear.

Throughout the book To Kill A Mockingbird Lee discusses the effects of ignorance and the toll it takes on people such as Tom Robinson, Boo Radley, Scout herself, and many more. Through her examples of sexism, prejudice, and racism, from the populist of poverty stricken Southerners, she shows the readers the injustice of many. The victims of ignorance are the ‘mockingbirds’ of the story. A good example of this injustice is the trial of Tom Robinson, who is falsely accused of raping a white girl and is found guilty. The book is from the point of view Scout, a child, who has an advantage over most kids due to her having a lawyer as a dad, to see the other side of the story. Her father tells her in the story, “you never really know a man until

Through the eyes of an innocent child, the story of To Kill a Mockingbird introduces a world of corruption. In the disordered town of Maycomb, certain character traits are developed and displayed in a specific local family. The opposition against their beliefs brings daunting situations to their door. Yet, this one family perseveres through the continuous corruption of Maycomb. Therefore, this recurring motif of character development really plays into the characters and, consequently, the story. This evident pattern of courage composes the Finch family: Jem, Scout, and Atticus.

During the story Atticus is appointed to defend Tom Robinson, a Black man accused of raping a young white woman, Mayella Ewell. Even though many of Maycomb’s citizens disapprove, Atticus agrees to defend Tom in hopes he could give some justice to Tom. Later in the plot it is made abundantly clear that Mayella did not have relations with Tom, and was only trying to cover for her dad, Bob Ewell, who had beaten and raped her before, but before this information was found Tom was convicted and murdered. The trial and conviction serve as high points in the story because soon after the readers learn Tom is convicted purely based on his color of skin. “In our courts, when it’s a white man’s word against a black man’s, the white man always wins” (Lee, page 251-252). The written discrimination put a black man behind bars based on false information and nobody blinked an eye. The lesson that Scout learns is applicable to all types of prejudice because people who are different from ones self may feel separated and that in order to hold ones power, processions, and status, privileged races or people much like Bob Ewell will justify their behaviors in order to keep the other races

Prejudice within the white community is another theme that is explored in the novel. In the novel the member of the white community being singled out is Boo Radley. Boo Radley is singled out by almost everyone in the white community including Scout. Scout singling out Boo is important because it is part of the novels narrative which is that the events are seen from the innocent, non biased point of view (Scout). The innocence of scout is made apparent when she says “I think there’s just one kind of folks” which is her unknowingly occurring the values that Atticus has installed in her. This links to the characterisation of racial divide which is an important feature of the novel. Also as aforementioned this is an example of Scout subconsciously portraying her innocent personality. The quote “when they finally saw him, why he hadn’t done any of those things...” , “Atticus he was real nice” Is again an example of Scouts innocence.